“Obstacles are what you see when you take your eyes off the goal”– Vince Lombardi, football coach (1913-1970)

How many of you think this way?

Discouragement is a very powerful feeling, and sometimes we might feel like everything we’ve worked for has gone to waste, or you’ve done it for nothing. We try and try for something, but never feel like you can fully accomplish the task. Discouragement is a reaction to what we feel, and we think it’s because other people discourage us, but really, it’s our own reaction to our mistakes.

Ob-sta-cle: /äbstekel/ - Noun – A thing that blocks one’s way or prevents or hinders progress. We all face some type of obstacle in our lives, whether we are fully aware of it or not.

To touch on a few of those topics, a lot of people have the biggest issues with their emotions, self-esteem, money, stress, and procrastination.

There are a lot of people who don’t know how to handle their emotions, especially when they have nobody to talk to. People feel the need to be perfect, have the perfect house, perfect family, and perfect jobs, basically perfect everything. What a lot of people don’t realize is that they don’t need all of these nice things to have a fulfilling life. That ties in with money as well, because to have all of these perfect things you need money. With our economy the way it is, not all of us have a lot of money to spare, which causes stress. It seems like a never-ending chain of reactions doesn’t it?

Being a high school senior, I struggle a lot with procrastination, and I know I’m not the only one; from adults not getting things done around the house or at work, to kids not doing their chores. We just choose to do them at a later date, and then we realized how much we are slacking and we become overwhelmed with all of the things we now have to do. They become obstacles that conflict with whatever else we have to do, which brings me back to my point. If people decide to be satisfied with what they have, and not want all the perfect things in life, and if they did things on time with time to spare, we wouldn’t have to face those overwhelming obstacles in life.

Page 2 of 2 - Sounds easy when you write it down, right? Well, not exactly. Saying you can and will change things is quite different from actually doing them. Everyone has different struggles and hard obstacles in their lives and deal with them differently. It’s all about how we use our resources in life to make life easier for us.

Life was intended to have an obstacle; that’s the way it’s going to be forever. We just have to take what we can get, and be appreciative of things so we don’t find ourselves stuck in the chain reaction of the struggles I listed earlier.

“The greater the obstacle, the more glory in overcoming it.” ― Molière